§147. In some of these tasks intelligence and skill were required as they are to-day, but in many of them the most necessary qualifications were strength and endurance, as the slaves took the place of much of the machinery of modern times. This was especially true of the men employed in the quarries, who were usually of the rudest and most ungovernable class, and were worked in chains by day and housed in dungeons by night, as convicts have been housed and worked in much later times.
§148. The Vilicus.--The management of such an estate was also intrusted to a _vilicus_ (§145), who was proverbially a hard taskmaster, simply because his hopes of freedom depended upon the amount of profits he could turn into his master's coffers at the end of the year. His task was no easy one. Besides planning for and overseeing the gangs of slaves already mentioned, he had under his charge another body of slaves only less numerous, employed in providing for the wants of the others. Everything necessary for the farm was produced or manufactured on the farm. Enough grain was raised for food, and this grain was ground in the farm mills and baked in the farm ovens by millers and bakers who were slaves on the farm. The task of turning the mill was usually given to a horse or mule, but slaves were often made to do the grinding as a punishment. Wool was carded, spun, and woven into cloth, and this cloth was made into clothes by the female slaves under the eye of the steward's consort, the _vilica_. Buildings were erected, and the tools and implements necessary for the work of the farm were made and repaired. These things required a number of carpenters, smiths, and masons, though they were not necessarily workmen of the highest class. It was the touchstone of a good _vilicus_ to keep his men always busy, and it is to be understood that the slaves were alternately plowmen and reapers, vinedressers and treaders of the grapes, perhaps even quarrymen and lumbermen, according to the season of the year and the place of their toiling.
§149. The Familia Urbana.--The number of slaves kept by the wealthy Roman in his city mansion was measured not by his needs, but by the demands of fashion and his means. In the early days a sort of butler (_atriensis_), or major domo, had relieved the master of his household cares, had done the buying, had kept the accounts, had seen that the house and furniture were in order, and had looked after the few servants who did the actual work. Even under the Republic all this was changed. Other slaves, the _procurator_ and _dispensator_, relieved the _atriensis_ of the purchasing of the supplies and the keeping of the accounts, and left to him merely the supervision of the house and its furniture. The duties of the slaves under him were, in the same way, distributed among a number many times greater. Every part of the house had its special staff of servants, often so numerous as to be distributed into _decuriae_ (§133), with a separate superintendent for each division: one for the kitchen, another for the dining-rooms, another for the bedrooms, etc.